Finding the most relevant web content can be can be time consuming and arduous for users. The most common way to navigate through web content is by selecting hyperlinks on a currently-viewed web page. Also, most, if not all, web browsers provide back and forward button functionality accessible from the browser user interface. For example, Internet Explorer version 6.0 by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. provides forward and back functionality using clickable buttons. Examples associated with Internet Explorer version 6.0 are described below.
A user browsing from web page 1 to web page 2 to web page 3 by sequential selection of hyperlinks can navigate back from web page 3 to web page 2 by pressing the back button. After navigating back to web page 2, a user can navigate back further to web page 1 by pressing the back button or, alternatively, navigate forward by pressing the forward button to navigate to web page 3. From web page 3 however, pressing the forward button will result in no action taken. Namely, the forward button merely allows forward navigation to a web page from which the currently viewed web page has most recently navigated to during the current browsing session. Similarly, pressing the back button allows navigation back to the web page from which the user most recently navigated to the currently viewed page.
The functionality of the back and forward buttons has been expanded with the use of a down arrow next to each button, which when selected causes a drop down menu to be displayed. The drop down menu or travel log menu associated with the back button provides a travel log in the form of a history of the recent pages which the user has navigated to with the items ordered from top to bottom on the menu with most recently viewed web page listed first, the second most recently viewed web page listed second and so on. Typically, the list provides the URL (uniform resource locator) of each web page. The forward button drop down menu or travel log menu is similar to the back button travel log menu in format except it provides a travel log of web pages that can be navigated to in the forward direction. In this instance, the travel log menu for the forward button includes pages which can be navigated to in the forward direction that the user has already navigated to during the current browsing session.
If a back button travel log menu lists five items and the user selects item 3, the browser navigates to item 3. The travel log menu for the forward button would include items 1 and 2 from the previous travel log menu and the travel log menu for the back button would include items 4 and 5 from the previous travel log menu. Thus, navigation by selecting a URL from a travel log menu preserves the history regarding both the page which navigated to the currently viewed page by linking (as opposed to selection from the drop down list) and the page to which (if any) the user navigated from the currently viewed page by selection of a hyperlink.
While the aforementioned back and forward button functionality and travel log menus can make the user browser experience less time-consuming, they are only available if a user has already navigated to those pages during the current browsing session. As such, when a user initiates a browsing experience, the browser displays the user's home page. In this instance, no back or forward button functionality including back and forward travel log menus is available because the user has not navigated to any other pages during the current browsing session. At most, the user can access a favorites list which identifies web pages which a user has previously bookmarked and can directly navigate to. It would be beneficial to anticipate where the user might want to navigate to and provide the user with navigational alternatives other than the hyperlinks available on the currently viewed page.
The Opera web browser by Opera Software ASA of Oslo, Norway provides a fast forward functionality. The Opera browser automatically analyzes the text on the currently-viewed page to determine what page would come next in a logical sequence and allows the user access to that page when the fast forward button is clicked on. When visiting an image gallery with numbered images, the Opera browser allows the user to view the next image in an image sequence by pressing the fast forward button.
While the Opera fast forward functionality improves on the traditional back and forward button functionality and travel log menus, it would be useful to further enhance the user browsing experience by providing multiple navigational alternatives in addition to the hyperlinks and history-based navigation alternatives.